Police Hit Drug Suppliers, And Serious Crime Falls

By CLIFFORD KRAUSS

Published: August 26, 1996

Using an assortment of old and new tactics to eliminate the drug trade in high-crime neighborhoods, the New York City Police Department is seeing the first fruits of an ambitious drug crackdown that goes beyond the arrests of low-level dealers and targets the entire networks that supply them.

The crackdown is predicated on the belief that drug trafficking drives violent crime in the city and that dismantling neighborhood drug organizations will accelerate the already-sharp declines in crime.

Dramatic results are being seen in most of the targeted areas in lower Manhattan, northern Brooklyn and the central Bronx, where 1,200 additional officers and detectives have been assigned since January.

''The neighborhood was a mess,'' Antonio Pena, the owner of a beauty parlor on the Lower East Side, said of the area before the crackdown. ''You couldn't even get your hair cut in peace.''

Just last year, heroin sellers and buyers choked the block of Norfolk Street between Rivington and Stanton Streets, forcing Mr. Pena to build a fence around his shop. Addicts burglarized apartments and robbed students on their way home from school. Shoot-outs between dealers sent domino players scurrying under their card tables.

But in April, the drug trafficking all but disappeared under the city's new crackdown. Over four months, the Police Department cleaned up the block, ferreting out and then attacking the roots of the organization that ran the Norfolk Street drug trade for nearly a decade.

''We finally have a little peace,'' Mr. Pena said, ''and business is up.''

To Mr. Pena, success is as simple as a drug-free sidewalk. But to the police, it goes deeper: where officers used to concentrate mainly on easy arrests of low-level buyers and sellers on the streets, the new effort follows drug dealing up the ladder, then uses a combination of enforcement and harassment to attack it.

To clean up Norfolk Street, officers recruited informers, closed stash houses and, ultimately, arrested the bosses with the money and know-how to supply the local drug trade. The goal was to keep the dealers from coming back or moving up the block, a common result of past sweeps.

While Police Commissioner Howard Safir says it is too soon to declare victory, the crackdown that cleaned up Norfolk Street represents a sea change in how the Police Department combats drug trafficking. And it signifies a new phase in crime fighting for a city where a sharp decline in violent offenses has led the nation over the last three years.

The old divisions between patrol officers, detectives and narcotics investigators are disappearing, enabling a single precinct to take a team approach.

And the department is working more closely than ever with Federal law enforcement agencies.

More time and resources are being directed toward investigating the internal workings of the few hundred interlocking drug organizations that police officials say are now the source of most of the city's crime. And once the drug gangs are identified, officers using tools like search warrants, nuisance abatement laws and fire code regulations move in to close them down. Yesterday, Mr. Safir said the city was escalating its offensive against businesses that tolerate drug sales by greater use of nuisance abatement laws.

''It's a new way of doing business,'' Commissioner Safir said. Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani called it ''the culmination of many years of trial and error in dealing with drug crime. Every drug arrest is a challenge to uncover the conspiracy and network that lies behind the sale of crack cocaine and heroin.''

Police officials say that in recent months they have identified and shut down more than 50 drug organizations and padlocked more than 100 bodegas and social clubs that sold drugs. Many of the city's top wholesalers have been taken out of commission, placed in jail where they are awaiting trial.

Paradoxically, drug arrests are actually declining since officers in the crackdown are turning their attention away from street apprehensions, but felony crime ranging from murder to car theft reported in the 14 precincts covered by the initiative is down 20 percent so far this year, nearly double the decline in the city's 62 other precincts.

To be sure, for every Norfolk Street victory there are many more city streets still overrun by narcotics. The police cannot completely extinguish drug dealing, especially in the face of what appears to be rising use of drugs among teen-agers nationwide. Drug prices have remained constant during the crackdown, meaning supply and demand have not changed much.

While there has so far been only a slight displacement of drug dealing into other neighborhoods, Mr. Safir has warned suburban police chiefs and district attorneys that they must prepare for increased drug trafficking as dealers move outside the city.

Police officials do not expect to wipe out drug dealing, but they hope to contain it longer in the neighborhoods they target, then follow it if it moves. ''Drug organizations are like cockroaches,'' Commissioner Safir said. ''We need to spray them constantly.''

Police Commissioner William J. Bratton began the effort as a pilot program in July 1995 on the Lower East Side.